How Seth MacFarlane Turned the Bro-Skewing Ted 2 into the Apex of His Star Trek Fanaticism

The man's comedy enterprise boldly goes where only hardcore nerds have gone before.

Seth MacFarlane is obsessed with Star Trek. He may speak to a sophomoric audience, mainstream pop culture references abound in Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, but nothing overloads his warp core quite like Trek. He even appeared on the Star Trek's prequel series Enterprise twice (Ensign Rivers!), had a character named for him (Ensign McFarlane!), and hosted a 71-minute "Inside The Writers Room" feature for the Next Generation Season 3 Blu-ray. As the guy's worth a fortune in gold-pressed latinum, those gigs were just for love.

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His new film, Ted 2 shows his Trek-lust has not been slaked with producing the recent Cosmos series. He's found numerous ways to "boldly go" on this outing. Of particular note is how Ted 2's nerdery may be a foreshadow the return of a particular fan favorite. Let's explore how, ranked by just how deep MacFarlane goes into his own Trek-loving soul:

7. Like the first Ted the film opens with voice over from Sir Patrick Stewart. But Stewart is a voice-over titan and MacFarlane and the actor have worked together for years. (69 episodes of American Dad!, 14 episodes of Family Guy and an uncredited voice in A Million Ways to Die in the West.) Stewart will next be seen in Starz's Blunt Talk, produced by MacFarlane. So this is almost regular person behavior.

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6. At some point along the way in Ted 2, Amanda Seyfried must argue that a sentient bear is a person, not property. (Note: don't take Ted 2 too seriously.) In a potentially problematic moment, Ted and Mark Wahlberg are watching Roots on television. As Kunta Kinte is being whipped, Ted offers that "this is just like me!"

Two important things happen. One, Wahlberg backpedals and says "well, not quite" and, two, Trek nuts recall that young Kunta Kinte was played by LeVar Burton, better known to sci fi dorks as Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge.

5. You aren't just imagining: fighting a legal battle to prove that a "thing" can be human is familiar. It's the crux of Season 2, Episode 9 Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. Sure, philosophical discussions about sentience can also be traced to, say, René Descartes, but this one is clearly rooted in Trek.

4. Ted 2's finale is set at New York Comic Con. This means running around a lot of recognizable IPs, including a deus ex machina that flies down from the rafters. It's shaped like the USS Enterprise. The Enterprise-D, to be specific, as the saucer section is thinner and comes to a point, more likely to do damage as it slices through the set.

kirk vs gorn

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3. The crashing spaceship comes amid a dweebish battle royale. Cosplayers from different Universes take up arms against one another, such that the cholesterol-rich heart of your inner Comic Book Guy will go affluter. A Dalek fighting the Robot from Lost in Space? My word!

Trek however, gets a double-shot. We finally get to see Kirk vs. Picard (and, yes, the Original Series Captain uses some of that Kirk-Fu) but we also catch a glimpse of the Gorn vs. The Creature From the Black Lagoon's Gill-man. I always thought of the Gorn as desert-based and not aquatic, but I guess that's why I'm not a zillionaire film director.

2. The key dramatic beat in Ted 2 is when he's stripped of his humanity. A sympathetic woman at an adoption agency gives him the news and just before you turn away from this bit of necessary plot momentum you realize—hey, wait—that's Major Kira!

Nana Visitor, best known to us as second-of-command on Deep Space Nine, got the call for this quick, thankless role. You can picture uber-fan Seth MacFarlane on the phone to his producers, "I will accept no one other than Nana Visitor for this part!" Sure, Seth, you got it.

1. Patrick Warburton's character from the first Ted is back and this time we meet his lover, played by none other than Michael Dorn a.k.a. Worf, the mighty Klingon Warrior and Son of Mogh from the House of Martok. These two broad-shouldered men with extreme baritone voices as a loving gay couple are a wonderful play on expectations.

Spanning both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Dorn was in more episodes of Trek than any other actor by a country parsec (272 to be exact) so it's no wonder Seth MacFarlane is going to want to see him wear the ridged forehead again. But how?

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By staging the film's climax at Comic-Con, the movie's final scenes logically find him in a cheapo homebrew version of Klingon makeup and garb. (Warburton is in on the act, too, dressed as The Tick.) This is the first time Michael Dorn has dressed like a Klingon since shooting 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis. If it were up to him, it wouldn't be the last.

Flying high after Ted 2, we spoke to Dorn to talk about this small role and what it means for him.

For starters, you aren't seeing Worf. It's his character (Rick) going down to Comic-Con to mess with nerds, wearing an intentionally bad costume. "The baldric is made out of pull-tabs, the shirt doesn't fit!" Dorn chuckles. Also, the makeup only took 30 minutes, as opposed to 3 hours for the Star Trek films.

Dorn didn't even know his former cast member Nana Visitor was in the film until after the film wrapped. They discovered it over dinner conversation when they were both in New York for (drumroll) Comic-Con. "You're in Ted 2?!?" Dorn recalls shouting. "I'm in Ted 2, too!"

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Even though his character is seen offering wedgies to sci-fi lovers, he's not worried the fans will turn on him. "After Galaxy Quest I think they all get it." Especially as Dorn is currently at the center of a fan groundswell. Once the third Star Trek movie is out of theaters, most agree that, eventually, and in some form, Trek will return home to TV. Michael Dorn has his pitch ready.

"We've had meetings with CBS and Paramount and in this business you keep at it until it goes away. And as of right now no one has said 'no.' They have not said 'this is a terrible idea, we hate you, we hate Worf, go away!'"

The pilot script for Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Worf Chronicles, which Dorn wrote himself, is set in the Klingon Empire, years since we've last seen him. Smart move, as it doesn't necessarily negate anything that's been happening in the movies, and lends itself to nice guest appearances from other cast members. If Data wants to drop by one day, I'm sure they can fit it in.

"There's a fan-run thing going on where people are sending muffins to CBS executives. I figured, why not? I wanted them to do healthy muffins, I'm a very healthy guy, but it's a fan thing, I can't say one way or the other. In the long run, it never hurts."

Worf-boosters have shipped over 50,000 muffins to the suits at CBS.

For hardcore fans, Dorn's Worf really is the most beloved character—he represents the richness of an imaginary species and has had the most remarkable arc. Are a few goofy scenes in Ted 2 just a warm up? Dorn says that despite MacFarlane being a Trekkie nonpareil he hasn't geeked out with him about all things Klingon. "In this business, even if you are crazy about someone, you tend to just say 'I love your work' and that's it. But clearly the guy is a fan." Just any fan, or one aiming to kickstart a new television adventure on the sly? The chances of a Worf-led series sounds crazy to me. But I never thought we'd be seeing an Episode VII. If this moves the needle, Seth MacFarlane will have proven himself worthy to drink bloodwine and sing songs of battle with Kahless in Sto-vo-kor? Which, for you non-fans, is a very good thing.

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